Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux 17)

“You ever sleep with another man’s wife?” Clete asked.

“Sir?”

“I hadn’t ever done that, at least not knowingly. Ever sleep with the wife of a man who was burned up in a tank?”

“Mr. Purcel, I ain’t up to this.”

“Were you in the service?”

“No sir.”

“See, when you watch other guys pay really hard dues, you accord them a certain kind of respect. That means you don’t screw their wives or even their girlfriends, particularly when it’s not an even field any longer. The guy who does that doesn’t deserve to wear the uniform. He doesn’t deserve to tell people he ever wore it, either.”

“You slept with this woman you was talking about?”

“What difference does it make? It’s yesterday’s box score, right?” Clete said. “What are those guys over there looking at?”

“Her name is Jamie Sue Stapleton. Her husband might call her Wellstone, but for a lot of us she’ll always be Jamie Sue Stapleton from Yoakum, Texas, ’cause that’s where she comes from. Don’t be talking about box scores, either, not when it comes to Jamie Sue.”

Clete refocused his eyes on Gribble, as though looking at a different man from the one he had picked up on the dirt road.

“Where you going?” Clete said.

“I feel sick. I took some cold medicine today. I’m gonna lie down in the back of the truck,” Gribble sa

id. “I think I’m fixing to pass out.”

Gribble went out the door, his hand pressed to his stomach. Clete ordered another round, wondering if he was the only sane person on the planet.

In the next hour, Clete lost count of the amount of booze he pumped into his system. The noise inside the club had become deafening, and the band had compensated by turning up its loudspeakers. The hands on the clock above the bar either had no motion at all or in seconds indicated that twenty minutes had passed. Clete was sweating inside his clothes, his ears filling with sounds like wind blowing across moonscape. For just a moment all sound stopped, as though the shapes and movements of people around him were one-dimensional and no more real than those of a silent cartoon on a screen.

A second later, the sound track returned with the power of someone clapping his hands on Clete’s ears.

“Hey, Mac?” the bartender said.

“What?”

“You were in the Crotch?”

“Who told you I was in the Corps?”

“You asked me if I’d been at Parris Island.” The bartender leaned closer. “Keep your eyes on me. Don’t turn around. You hearing me, gunny?”

“Yeah,” Clete said.

“Those guys at the back table must know you from some other gig.”

“Yeah, they come into that joint on Highway 12 and 93.”

“I heard them talking. Don’t get yourself hurt.”

“You telling me they want some shit?”

“No, I didn’t say that at all.”

“Give me another shot and a beer back.”

“I tried.”